


Daylight

by noblydonedonnanoble



Series: The Road We Never Drove On [1]
Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:31:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/noblydonedonnanoble





	Daylight

                She won’t stop looking over at me. As it is, I’m exerting all of my effort to not glance in her direction, but she seems to be having much more trouble controlling herself. I can _feel_ her eyes on me, and I can just imagine the tragic gaze and the pouting lips.

                Behind each one of her smirks, I see her frowning. Behind each laugh is a note of apprehension. Behind our kiss… well, what _isn’t_ hiding behind that kiss? Intensity and frustration and sadness and energy, so much energy that we’re transferring through lips and tongues and fingers.

                And during our bows, I’m surprised my hand doesn’t fall off because she’s squeezing it so tightly. Though admittedly, I’m probably gripping her hand just as hard.

                We receive absolutely thunderous applause. While I expected this kind of a farewell, it’s still thrilling. I can’t stop beaming, and I feel some stray tears welling up in my eyes. When I finally take the opportunity to look at her, Catherine is quite the same. Looking at her, it hurts a bit to smile. Because suddenly, all I can think is _we’re done_.

                It’s a terrifying thought, being done.

                Outside, at the stage door, the only moments that truly register to me are the moments she’s standing near me. When she brushes past me, I shiver, and when she puts her hand on me I practically die. I can feel myself plastering on grins and making idle chat as I pose for photos and scrawl signatures. Even though I’m vaguely aware of the people shouting my name, I’m still forgetting faces and voices as soon as I’ve acknowledged them and moved on to someone else. The only one that matters is that of the woman standing a few feet from me, doling out her own signatures and being the subject of other photographs.

                I go back in first. Catherine’s being more precise than I really have the patience for, making sure to reach as many people as possible before coming in to join me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that she does it just to tease me, but I know that’s not the case. I know that, tonight of all nights, she wouldn’t do something purely to tease me.

                Instead of standing right inside the door waiting for her, I go to my dressing room to gather my things, because I know when she doesn’t see me that’s where she’ll come looking.

                I take more time clearing off my table than ever before, picking up each individual object and gently placing them all away. Memories follow my possessions into the depths, memories of backstage and performances, memories of my room and hers. Memories of these deserted dark halls.

                I hope I never come into this theatre again.

                When I look up, I see Catherine reflected in my mirror. She’s standing in the doorway, just watching me. I wonder how long she’s been there.

                “Catherine.” I’m not quite sure how the word was supposed to sound, but it certainly comes out of my mouth much lower and nearer to a whisper than I intended.

                She actually smiles slightly at my reflection. I don’t realize that I didn’t expect any smiles this evening until I receive one. “Hey. I still have about twenty minutes until my car gets here; wanna keep me company?”

                I can’t help but wonder why she’s asking me. She’s always _asking_ , like she secretly expects me to say no. Like I haven’t given her a permanent yes.

                “Always.” I turn to face her, and hop up to sit on my table. “Care to close the door and make yourself at home?”

                While she does close the door, her interpretation of the phrase “make yourself at home” rather intrigues me because instead of sitting down somewhere, she chooses to come and stand mere inches in front of me.

                Even though I’m sitting, I still have to slouch slightly so that I can look into her eyes. After a moment of hesitation, I bring a hand up to her cheek. “We’re done. No more shows. No more Benedick and Beatrice.”

                “Yes.” The smile is still on her face, but it’s turned sadder. She looks almost lost. “You know what that means.”

                Neither of us bothers to actually say it. She leans forward, resting her hands on the table—with only centimeters between them and my hips. Her kissing me is something that I am mentally prepared for, but my body still reacts against my will, arching forward and into her as I deepen the kiss. She allows it, for a while, one of her hands actually wandering up my shirt while I savor the taste of her tongue and she lazily explores my mouth.

                When she feels my other hand drifting across her back toward the zipper of her dress, she pulls away with a sigh. “David, stop. Wait. Let’s think about this for a second. We shouldn’t… Don’t you want to… I mean… Why don’t we not rush anything, this time?”

                “Are you saying…” I’m fairly certain I know what she’s suggesting, and the idea both worries and excites me.

                It seems as though Catherine almost wants to take it back, but yet again it’s more of a question of whether I’ll say no. Always scared I’ll say no. Her words are so soft that it’s a wonder I catch them the first time—although it might be because I knew what they were going to be already. “Come back to my flat with me. Stay the night.”

                Rather than fill the air with more words, I nod. She kisses me again, slowly—I’m fairly certain glaciers move at a faster pace. I’m the one who pulls away this time. I take her hand and I hop off the table. Not in time for her to move back, though, so that our bodies are essentially pressed together. I raise my eyebrow at her as she steps back, but she just smirks and tugs me in the direction of the door.

                I grab my bag, and we leave my dressing room for the last time.

                Catherine’s car is waiting outside the theatre, and we both hop in. Originally, we were planning on going to a party for the cast. One look at her, though, and I know she’s no more eager to go this party than I am. So I lean over, murmur, “Shall we skip the party, then?”

                She smiles and asks the driver to bring us home instead.

                Home. I’m going home with Catherine.

                We sit in the back seat together, exercising the same self-control that we’ve had to exercise in public all summer; now, though, it would be blatantly obvious to anyone how much effort we’re putting into it, into not touching or kissing or honestly I wouldn’t mind even fucking her in the back of this car except that wouldn’t be decent.

                Besides which… not tonight. Not tonight, of all nights.

                On the way upstairs, Catherine rubs her thumb along my wrist, her skin only barely grazing mine. Every time I glance at her, though, she’s staring straight ahead, and I wonder at the fact that she couldn’t stop looking at me on stage but she’s put on such a magnificent poker face now.

                I have been in her flat before, but never like this. And tonight, she leads me to her bedroom, which I haven’t seen. She gestures to her bed. “Sit?”

                While I watch, she removes a few stray pins from her hair before letting it fall into place. It frames her face beautifully—I love it when she lets her hair just _be_.

                “Catherine.”

                There’s no real point to my saying her name, except that I love the feel of it rolling off my tongue and the sound when it hits my ears. And from the way she looks at me, she clearly loves the sound of her name coming from me too. “Help me with my necklace, please?”

                Of course. I jump up and take two strides before I’m standing behind her, reaching up and brushing her hair aside. I fumble with the clasp of the necklace for a few moments, and I think on any other occasion she would have tried to make light of—

                But this isn’t any other occasion.

                Finally I get it undone, and she catches it and sets it down carefully. I don’t move, though. One of my hands is still holding her hair back, and the other lingers at her neck.

                It’s a very kissable neck, that neck.

                So I take the open opportunity to enjoy her kissable neck. My lips simply brush the skin at first, but as she leans back and her hand comes up so her fingers can thread through my hair, I start to bite and suck instead. My hands fall to her waist, and whether I push against her or pull her to me I have no idea, but we’re standing oh so close and I want every article of clothing in between us to be gone _now_.

                But Catherine doesn’t want to fuck up this goodbye. And neither do I. Instead of reaching once more for the zipper of her dress (it’s quite tempting to even go at the zipper with my teeth, since they happen to be closer than my fingers), I take a step back and turn her to face me, taking her hands in my own.

                “I love you.” I say.

                Her eyes tell me everything. They tell me she hates me for saying that but she loves me for it too. They tell me that she wants this night to go on forever.

                They tell me that she’s dying inside.

                And I can’t look at her when her eyes say so much. I kiss her instead, because kissing is easy.

                Eventually, she apparently decides that it’s time for my shirt to come off, because her hands begin to slide it up my torso. I pull away long enough to tear it off and toss it away, and try to kiss her again, but she puts a finger to my lips.

                She actually puts a finger to my lips.

                Which makes me want to kiss her even more.

                Her hands travel down my chest, dragging ever more slowly until they finally reach my pelvis. She unbuttons and unzips my trousers, but stands back and watches until finally I remove them myself and my jeans are lying in a crumpled heap beside my shirt.

                “Unzip me, please, David?”

                I know _quite_ well that she can unzip and remove her own dresses. But I gesture that she turn, and she does. I opt out of using my teeth, as I had previously considered. While I nudge her sleeves off of her shoulders, I find myself entranced by her spine, by the curve of her back.

                Except then the dress is at her feet and she’s turning to face me and I remember that while her back is intriguing, when she’s facing me I’m positively hypnotized.

                “Now you sit,” I say. For just a moment, she looks at me questioningly, but she does it. I kneel on the floor in front of her, carefully removing her garters and stockings and putting them beside her dress.

                Catherine’s waiting for me to get up, but I don’t. “I’m sorry.” I want to tell her again that I love her—since honestly, she needs to hear it as much as possible while I can say it—but this has an equally great effect.

                “I know.” Again, she looks like she’s dying inside.

                “And I do love you.”

                There. Right there. With that, something in her died somewhere. I want, so desperately, to comfort her. There is no real way for her to respond to such a statement; every option would be rude, disrespectful, or opening herself up too much. But she’s already done that so much that she and I both know she’ll just continue on. “I love you too. Now please, stop kneeling in front of me.”

                While I expected this kind of a farewell, it’s still thrilling. I memorize her, every inch. I memorize how she tastes, I memorize the glorious smell of her bed (and ache at the idea that in the morning I’ll have to take a shower and scrub the smell away), I memorize her reactions to everything that I do that leads to a scream. I memorize how it feels to have her beneath me, and the way her hands hold me… Because no one has ever held me with as much reverence as Catherine does.

                When I ease into her, she bites my shoulder. I don’t understand entirely why until I feel her tears on my skin and realize she’s crying and is simply trying not to make the wrong kind of noise. As I increase the pace, her fingers knot into my hair and tug hard, her teeth creating an increasingly deep imprint on my flesh all the while.

                And then she starts to moan. She stops biting my shoulder in favor of shouting, “Yes” and “Jesus” and “Fucking hell.”

                She screams, “Mr. Tennant!” and we’re both gone.

                In the morning, Catherine’s already awake when the sun forces me to open my eyes. She’s frowning slightly at the ceiling. When I nudge her gently with my hand, she looks at me and smiles… But in her smile, I see sadness, frustration, and apprehension.

                “And now?” she says.

                “Now…” I grab one of her hands and lace our fingers together. “Now I go home to my fiancée and daughter. And I own up to all of my responsibilities.”

                “And we forget.”

                I shake my head. “No. We never forget. Whatever we do, we can’t forget. Our play? This summer? You’ve made my life better. I want to remember that forever.”

                She kisses me tenderly, and now I’m the one who’s crying.


End file.
